This is not a recipe. I wrote this as a series of tweets today and readers asked for it as a blog post, so here it is. Our politics may differ, so feel free to skip straight back to the recipes if that’s what you’re here for.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT DIANE ABBOTT.

Right one of us political writer people needs to do this and it looks like it’s me. Grab a seat. I wanna talk about Diane.
Diane was first elected as an MP in 1987, the year before I was born. She has been dedicated to serving the British public for longer than I have even been alive. Hold that thought. Understand it. Diane was the first black woman to have a seat in the House of Commons. She MADE HISTORY. Her father was welder, her mother a nurse. How many working class kids do we have…

According to a story in the Daily Mirror that I saw today, our Prime Minister “Mrs May will fly into Jordan on Monday afternoon to agree a new anti-ISIS battle partnership with one of Britain’s closest Gulf allies.”

I’m surprised, given the appalling human rights record of that increasingly dictatorial regime, that any civilised society wants anything at all to do with them. She’ll certainly not be speaking for me…

There is currently a petition doing the rounds here, calling for the reversal of restrictions on the housing element of Universal Credit for 18-21 year old people. One assumes that the cosy assumption that underlies this measure is that all under-21’s live with their parents, and that both parents and child(ren) are happy, and safe, in that environment.

Sadly, that is not always the case. What about care-leavers who have to leave their children’s home, or potentially their foster parents, should they be unable or unwilling to continue to support their foster kids after the allowances cease. What about abused adults or children. What about behaviour or restrictions that one or the other finds intolerable? What then?

It seems to me (being charitable) that we will soon see a prime example of the Law of Unintended Consequences in action. On the other hand, my not so charitable self thinks that this is a deliberate and cynical attack on our youth. In either case, I urge my readers (are there any?) to sign the petition here.